DESCRIPTION: (adapted from the application): The Center on Aging at UC is noted for its broad range of scientific expertise, spanning and now expanding into most of the disciplines currently involved in research on aging. Included among these are demography, economics, sociology, anthropology, population biology, genetics, statistics, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, epidemiology and medicine. In 1997 the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in England launched a new Center, The Centre for Aging and Public Health, which spans the three school departments: Epidemiology and Population Health, Public Health and Policy, and Infectious and Tropical Diseases. The director of the Centre is epidemiologist Dr. Astrid Fletcher. This new Center is composed of a number of outstanding scientists whose expertise is spread out among the various scientific disciplines currently involved in aging research. Their background and expertise on aging-related issues in developing countries is perhaps unmatched anywhere else in the world. In 1998 the University of Oxford in England launched a new multi-disciplinary Centre on Population Ageing that was established for the purpose of encouraging research on aging in the U.K. and collaborative research with scientists from other countries. Under the direction of Dr. Sarah Harper, this new Center has successfully coordinated a series of meetings designed to broker a U.K. National Longitudinal Survey on Later Life that parallels comparable work underway in the U.S. Harper has been affiliated with the Center on Aging at UC for several years and spent one year in Chicago under a grant provided by the NIA-funded Core A. An Extemal Innovative Network Core is proposed to foster collaboration with scientists at the new Centers in London and Oxford, and to enhance the international breadth of aging research by developing formal links between the three institutions. The specific aims of this Core are to facilitate collaborative research and teaching ties between scientists currently working in the field of aging in the United States and the United Kingdom; to make available to researchers from both countries, sources of data that might otherwise be difficult or impossible to use or obtain; to expand the breadth of research on aging in developing countries; and to encourage the formation of new teaching and research/grant alliances across the Atlantic that will broaden the scope of aging education and research in general and enhance the probability of continued funding for research on aging. This will be accomplished primarily through three mechanisms: (1) the support of pilot research projects initiated by Core A-affiliated scientists at the UC, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Oxford Centre on Population Ageing to collaborate with scientists from the other country (not necessarily at the host institutions), (2) a faculty exchange program designed to encourage scientists to travel to the other country for somewhat long time periods (such as a semester) for the purpose of conducting research or teaching in the field of aging and to develop data resources that can be used for research on aging by scientists at other universities, and (3) the continued funding of international collaborative workshops on ageing to be organized by Dr. Sarah Harper at the University of Oxford.